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Police warns of far-right Brexit exploitation

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu has claimed that the current ‘febrile’ atmosphere around Brexit could be exploited by far-right extremists.

Speaking at the launch of a new cinema advert aimed at encouraging people to report their suspicions about all forms of terrorism, the head of the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism operations warned that a far-right drift into extreme right-wing terrorism was concerning, but that officers were working to ensure groups did not gain a ‘foothold’.

Basu reiterated that leaving the EU with no deal would be ‘very bad’ for policing, with a record 700 terror investigations currently taking place, up from about 500 in March 2017.

There have been 18 terror plots were foiled in Britain since 2017, four of them related to far-right groups. 14 of the attacks foiled since 2017 involved Islamist suspects.

Basu said that although extreme right-wing activity was still a relatively small threat, it was also ‘something we've got to pay very close attention to in this country - that we don't let that kind of far-right drift into extreme right-wing terrorism and we're working very hard to stop that’.